Pole vaulter Kurtis Marschall becomes the fourth Australian to clear 6 metres in pole vault

Pole vaulter Kurtis Marschall has become the fourth Australian to clear 6 metres, achieving the landmark feat at an indoor meet in France. 

Marschall’s milestone came when finishing second behind super Swede Armand Duplantis at the All Star Perche in Clermont-Ferrand on Sunday, local time.

The 28-year-old from Adelaide needed three attempts to pass 5.9 metres but then cleared 6m at his first attempt.

Steve Hooker, Dmitri Markov and Paul Burgess are the only other Australians to have cleared the 6-metre mark.

Hooker, the 2008 Olympic champion, holds the Australian record with a 6.06m vault at an indoor meet in Boston in the United States in 2009.

Markov’s personal best of 6.05m earned him a gold medal at the 2001 outdoor world championships in Canada.

And Burgess cleared 6m at an outdoor meet in Perth in 2005.

Marschall is just the 31st man in the world to clear the milestone, with his performance in France giving him automatic qualification for next month’s world indoor championships in Poland.

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Marschall’s fresh personal best came in a competition again won by peerless world record holder Duplantis.

Sweden’s dual Olympic champion was in doubt for the meet after a recent bout of food poisoning.

But Duplantis, a three-time champion at both outdoor and indoor world titles, breezed through the competition, clearing 5.7m, 5.9m and 6.06m on his first attempts.

Duplantis then raised the bar to an indoor world record height of 6.31m — 4 centimetres higher than his current global benchmark.

But the 26-year-old — who had broken the world record at the meeting twice in the past, including last year — could not revise a world record for the 15th time in his career.

Duplantis also holds the outdoor world record of 6.3m, set when winning gold at last year’s world titles in Tokyo, when Marschall took the bronze medal with a 5.95m clearance.

AAP